Empty Silence
by Pinkster Lily
Summary: After his sudden suicide, a heartbroken Bella is forced to face a future devoid of Edward. She reluctantly finds comfort in the form of Edward's brother, Jasper, who now must pick up the pieces of the fractured woman he left behind. ALL HUMAN, Jasper/Bella
1. Everything Ends

Empty Silence

Written By:

Pinkster Lily

Chapter One:

Everything Ends

The breeze was lazy, lingering against the leaves of the trees overhead and playing with the ends of my dark hair. Sunlight flickered through the shade offered by the trees on the spring grass below my black shoes, peaceful, as birds chirped cheerfully around the clearing. Murmuring filled my ears, one calm, clear voice at the forefront.

"Hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out into our hearts…"

I rubbed my arms, feeling cold. The scene was beautiful, but the warmth of the day belied the somberness of the occasion. I shuddered, despite the warm air, and clung to myself throughout the ceremony, refusing to meet anyone's eyes, my own set trained on the wreath of white flowers in front of me.

"Indeed, only with difficulty does one die for a just person, though perhaps for a good person one might even find the courage to die. But God proves his love for us…"

I felt sick, listening to the passages. It took more courage to live, than it did to leave those who loved you behind. Anger boiled within me, although my stance did not betray it. I wanted to rend whoever had chosen these words to pieces, wanted with every fiber of my being to seize the pastor by his shoulders and shake him until the world started to make sense once again.

The crowd began to mill back towards the church as the casket was lowered into the ground, but I was rooted to my spot beside the grave, unwilling to accept the truth of this moment. I would never see him again, his dazzling smile and bright eyes. I would never hear his deep, hearty laugh, or the sound of his velvet voice. I was alone.

How could he do this to me?

I felt someone pause next to me, but didn't acknowledge their presence as I stared at the flowers atop the shining lacquered lid. A hand rested on my shoulder. "It's time to go back for the wake." The voice was smooth, sad. It's familiarity brought tears to my eyes for the first time since I had found _him_. It felt like a lifetime ago, although I knew it had only been a few days.

I shook my head, wrapping my arms around my middle as sobs began to rack my body, my grief threatening to split my fragile being into pieces. The hole in my chest grew larger, consuming, leaving nothing but my sadness, my loss.

Warm arms encased my shaking form, holding me together, if only for a moment. I could hear the tears in his anguished voice. "Come inside, Bella," he whispered, gripping me tighter. "Seeing this won't help." He turned my body, guiding me away from the place where my other half would forever reside, instead of next to me.

~o~

I sat in the corner of the room, staring at my hands while the people around me conversed in hushed whispers, ignoring those who tried to console me with their meaningless words. Everyone was sorry; sorry for my loss, sorry for the loss of a promising young life, sorry for the people he had left behind. No one dared to ask the most important question: why?

Why did he do it? Why did he think death was preferable to living with me? With his family?

My mind was haunted by the whys and the what-ifs, of what this day could have been for us. Images of our hands clasped together as we grew old filled my vision, choking me. I felt the weight of our once future crushing me; the room spun before my eyes.

The bathroom door shut loudly behind me, I didn't even bother to lock it as I collapsed over the toilet, dry-heaving. Bile rose in the back of my throat, triggering another wave of nausea. I gripped the edges of the pristine seat, sobbing as the feeling of utter sorrow settled over me. I was drowning in it.

Large hands gathered my hair back as I retched again, coughing. I hadn't realized I was no longer alone, and once it seemed that the worst was over I felt myself leaning back into the strong body behind me, still shaking.

"Shush," he said, rubbing my back. There was nothing else he could say that would make this horrible, hollow feeling go away.

"Jasper," I gasped, squeezing my eyes closed against another wave of uncontrollable anguish. My diaphragm contracted, preventing any further words.

He seemed to understand, holding me to him like he had in the cemetery. "It's okay, Bella. Just breathe."

I shook my head, disbelief coloring my voice. "It isn't okay," I struggled to tell him through my constricted throat. "It will never_ be _okay again. How could he?" I cried, fisting his nice dress shirt and pounding my fist against his chest. "How could he?"

I hadn't spoken since I had found him, his lifeless body lying prone, his hand dangling –

Jasper's voice interrupted my train of thought, his hands tightening on my shoulders. "I don't know," he answered finally. He helped me to my feet, ushering me out of the bathroom and into the empty kitchen. A cup of hot tea was before me almost instantly, sitting on the table as I stared at it, not really sure what to do with it. I slumped in my chair, gazing into its depths like it could give me the answers I sought.

I heard Jasper's soft voice beyond the kitchen, speaking to someone out of my field of vision. "I don't think seeing anyone would help right now," he explained, concerned. "I think she just wants to be left alone right now."

Quite murmurings answered him, unrecognizable to me.

"Yes, I know," he answered, and I saw him glance back into the kitchen from the doorway. "I know." He came back to me, sitting in the chair next to mine. "Drink some tea, Bella."

I wanted to object, but couldn't find the energy to refuse. I held the cup unsteadily to my lips, smelling its light fragrance, honey and cinnamon and apples all swirling around my head.

Minutes passed, they felt like hours. I sipped the tea, more out of a desire to wash the taste of bile from my mouth than anything else. Jasper sat silently next to me, staring out the window. I examined him, wanting anything that could distract me from the aching hole in my chest where _he_ should have been.

His blond hair waved down to his ears, longer than _his_ had ever been, and much more controlled than the unruly bronze locks that _he_ had possessed. His strong jaw was set into a grimace, skin tanned despite the general gloominess of this little town. I knew it was the result of living in California over the last few years, off at college and away from the clouds that consumed this entire area for most of the year. I wondered if going away to somewhere brighter, rather than staying here, would have changed anything.

His eyes, still focused on a point beyond the window, were dark, the deepest blue I had yet seen and filled with sadness.

For brothers, they didn't really look much alike. It was a fact that both eased my pain and sent bolts of unexpected hurt through me, as the thought that I would never see _him_ again invaded my mind for the hundredth time.

~o~

I stood outside of our bedroom, staring at the closed door as I attempted to gather the strength I needed to go inside. I had stayed with Alice, one of our close friends, for the last several days, not wanting to face the empty apartment. She had offered to come with me – my being alone seemed to bother her – but I felt like I had imposed on her hospitality for long enough and reassured her that I would be fine.

It was just an apartment, after all.

But it didn't feel that way as she dropped me off in front of it, its stone façade looming over me. Even being in the stairway caused my eyes to prick with tears and my chest to stiffen, waves of emotion cascading over me as memories surfaced, unbidden.

I had waved Alice off, though; my face frozen into something that I hoped didn't betray the chaos that ruled my thoughts. I took each step up to the third floor slowly, the heavy sound of my footsteps invading my senses as I thought of the pair that should have been following mine. It took me close to half an hour to open the front door, and when I did I could smell the sharp, biting scent of bleach under the tangy aroma of orange scented cleaner.

Trudging through the dark hallway into the kitchen, I had dumped my belongings onto the table there and sat on one of the barstools by the counter. The note he had left for me still rested on the marble, folded neatly with my name scrawled in his unmistakable handwriting and untouched. I hadn't been able to bring myself to read it, terrified of what I might find inside it.

I poured myself a glass of wine; barely touching the dark liquid inside it as I just sat there, wallowing in my self-pity until much of the light in the room had faded, dusk nearly plunging me into darkness. Flicking on the hall light, I had slowly made my way down to our bedroom door, glass forgotten, and just stood there. My fears were incomprehensible to me, the thought of entering that room alone one of the worst imaginable. His smell would assault me the moment I stepped inside, all the little reminders of him that I had so dutifully avoided the last few days surrounding me. I wasn't ready for them – I didn't think I ever would be.

Eventually, I found my way back to my glass of wine, sipping it slowly as I laid back on the couch in the living room and drifted off to dreams filled with his green eyes, his laughing face, and crooked grin. They were of little comfort, and I tossed restlessly the entire night.

~o~

I awoke to light, persistent knocking, groaning as I turned over, reaching out for _him _before I realized that I wasn't in our bed. The weight of the world came crashing down on me as my hand made contact with the cold, hard coffee table only a foot away. My clumsy fingers collided with the mostly empty wine glass there, sending it clashing onto the floor.

The knocking became harder. "Bella?" Jasper's voice called through the door, anxious.

The shards of glass glinted in the early morning sunlight that streaked across the wood floor, the dark red stain of the leftover wine pooling around them. A wave of queasiness flooded through me at the sight of them, causing me to curl up and close my eyes.

"Bella, I'm coming in." I heard keys jingling, scraping against the lock, and then Jasper's sure footsteps as he came to the kitchen. I didn't open my eyes, shrinking in on myself. "Oh, Bella," he sighed.

The vibrations of his steps shook the couch as he got closer. I felt his hand on my shoulder, pulling me up into a sitting position against the arm. My hands automatically came up to my face, shielding it from view. "I'll clean this up," he said, walking away from me for a brief moment. I peaked out at him through my fingers, watching as he mopped up the spilled wine and picked up the shards of glass gingerly.

When he was done, he sat down next to me on the couch. "I went by Alice's this morning to check on you, but she said you had left yesterday afternoon," he started, voice soft. "Why did you come back here, Bella?"

I bit my lip. "I thought I was ready. I didn't want to impose on Alice any longer."

He sighed. "Bella, I doubt that you were imposing. I'm sure she would be fine with you staying as long as you needed."

I tilted my head back, folding my arms around my knees and glancing over at him. "I can't just leave his things here. Esme and Carlisle will be wanting some of them back, and I can't bear the thought of looking at them," I explained.

"They don't expect you to do anything," he countered. "And neither do I," he added, watching me. The hurt in his eyes was apparent to me as mine was to him. "You need to focus on yourself, right now."

I didn't know how he could say that, with the loss of his brother weighing down on him.

"I'll make some breakfast." I followed him to the bar, absentmindedly watching from the stool as he searched the cupboards for various ingredients, occasionally asking me where something was.

The smell of pancakes quickly filled the apartment, my stomach growling in response as I realized that I couldn't remember when I had last eaten a proper meal. I ate in silence as Jasper cleaned the kitchen, wiping down the stove and scrubbing the pans. This was the kind of thing that _he_ would have done for me; the thought sent a pang through me.

"Esme offered to help you pack up his things," Jasper told me, leaning on the counter across from me. I didn't look up from the pancakes I was slowly cutting. Esme had approached me as I was leaving their house after the wake, but I had turned her down, not wanting to cause her more pain than necessary. She was like a mother to me, especially after my own parents had passed a few years ago, and the pain of losing a son was hard enough on her – she didn't need to see the place where it had happened.

Jasper sighed; I saw him look down at his clasped hands. "I don't want her to see it," I explained, voice hushed, after I swallowed another bite. "It's hard enough on her already."

He nodded to himself. "It's hard on all of us."

I finished the pancakes in silence, not meeting his eyes.

~o~

I used the guest bathroom to wash up, changing out of the clothes from last night and scavenging through the laundry room for clean ones so that I wouldn't have to go into my bedroom closet. My gaunt face stared back at me in the mirror as I tugged the knots out of my hair, not caring as small sparks of pain registered in my scalp.

When I was done, I stood in front of the sink, feeling hollow despite the fullness of the large meal Jasper had made me. I wasn't sure how I could return to my normal life without _him_, how I could go on as if my life hadn't shattered as soon as I entered our bathroom.

Jasper knocked on the bathroom door. "Bella?"

I jolted back to the present. "Yeah, I'm almost done," I called; reaching for the spare toothbrushes we kept in the medicine cabinet.

Once finished, I opened the bathroom door to find him waiting for me in the hallway. I brushed past him, grabbing my coat and purse before walking out of the apartment. I stood in the stairwell as he followed, closing and locking the door behind him. He had kindly volunteered to drive me to the hospital so that the stitches in my hand could be removed.

We said nothing on the rainy drive there, him focusing on the road and adjusting the radio every now and then. Guilt racked through me as I looked at his stony expression before quickly turning to the trees flickering past.

He offered to come into the office with me when my name was called, but I told him to stay in the waiting room, citing the simple procedure as my excuse. In all honesty, I just wanted to be alone as the last remnant from that horrible night was removed from my body.

"You are very lucky that you didn't sever a nerve," the nurse told me, deftly cutting the stitches in my palm. I nodded, not feeling lucky at all. If I had been lucky, _he_ would still be here with me, waiting for me outside of the office instead of his brother. "There, all done," she proclaimed, smiling at my blank face and handing me a card detailing the after care. I forced a smile, thanking her, and let her lead me back to the waiting room.

We walked back to the car, feeling troubled by the last time we had been here, less than a week ago. Jasper broke the silence. "I saw the note on the counter," he mentioned, and my eyes met his blue ones for an instant before darting back to the damp cement of the parking lot. "Have you read it?"

My chest squeezed painfully, throbbing. "No," I managed, gritting my teeth. He paused, hand reaching for my arm. I shrugged him off, turning to face him. "I don't want to read it, nothing will fix _this_!" I hissed, lashing out at him. I instantly felt remorseful. "I'm sorry," I said, stuttering. "I'm just so…"

Jasper nodded, understanding on his face. "I know, I feel it, too." Could he feel my guilt over not being able to help _him_, too? I was the one who lived with him, loved him, cared for him. I should have known, but I didn't. The hole in my chest threatened to overtake me, devour me whole.

"He left me a note, too," he began, and my eyes flitted up to his. "It came in the mail the day before the funeral." I flinched. "He didn't blame any of us," he assured me.

It didn't matter if he didn't blame me. I blamed myself.

"I think you should read the note," he told me, pressing on as I shook my head. "I think it might help you get some closure."

"Jasper, how can I go through life without him?" I questioned, staring at him. "How can I ever come to terms with what he did? I _found_ him," I cried, wiping the salty tears from my cheeks. "If I had only come home sooner – "

Jasper waved his hand, cutting me off. "No what ifs," he said. "Nothing you could have done would have changed what happened." Regardless of what he told me, my mind still circled around the possibilities, of getting _him_ help. Jasper gripped my shoulder, looking like he was about to say something more.

I shook him off, stepping back from him. "Just take me home."

~o~

That night I threw myself into the rest of the wine bottle, not caring that it was now stale. I passed out on the couch, curled into a ball with my shoes still on, my cries the only sound in our empty apartment.


	2. A Lifetime Without Him

Chapter Two:

A Lifetime Without Him

Dawn came too soon, the light making my head pound. My shifting body on the couch was the only sound in the desolate apartment, reminding me painfully of how my life had so drastically changed. The vast hole in my chest yawned open, sucking away any meaning that I could have found in living another day.

Was this how he had felt when he decided to kill himself?

Tears came to my eyes again, unwelcome, their sticky trails falling into my hair as I stared at the ceiling, my legs hanging over the arm of the loveseat. I should have been uncomfortable, my neck and back aching from the awkward sleeping arrangement, but all I could feel was the constant anguish at the thought of living another day, another week, a _lifetime_ without him here at my side.

I couldn't bring myself to move into the kitchen when hunger began to naw at my stomach, nor when thirst parched my throat, turning my mouth to ash. I felt like I was spiraling down into oblivion, like there would never be another sunrise without him, as if the world had stopped turning the moment he left it.

I knew it was irrational, but I felt like the pain would never go away, would never dull – that I would have to live with it forever, a constant, inescapable weight on my chest. The prospect was horrifying and it shook me to my very core, but even idea of living for the rest of my life feeling this way – alone, suffering – wasn't enough to make me consider doing what he did. I just couldn't leave behind everyone else to clean up my mess.

That was the root of it, my confusion, my sadness over what he did. I couldn't understand how he was able to leave us – to leave me – behind. There was no world where I could imagine living a better life without him, no circumstance that would cause me to want anyone other than him. A life without him, was no life at all.

We had been so happy, or at least I had thought so. We had known each other since we were kids, best friends since preschool. There hadn't been a time that I could remember not having him at my side, for one reason or another. Even when our bodies started to change, becoming so incredibly awkward and pimply and lanky, when our peers had told us we couldn't be friends now because he was a boy and I was a girl, we held fast to our friendship, refusing to let go.

I still remembered our first kiss, which was also my first kiss, all those years ago – before we had realized that we felt more for each other than simple friendship – in middle school at a party playing spin the bottle. Our friends had wanted us to get together, fixing the game, citing our commonalities and our opposite genders, like that was all we needed to become more than friends. But it wasn't enough, to me, he was just a friend, who had happened to be a boy, and to him I was just a friend, who happened to be a girl. Our friendship was all either of us needed.

Years later, we were still close despite the stresses of being in high school, our other friends having given up on getting us together, when my parents died. He had been the one to hold me, to tell me that it would all be okay, I would just have to stay strong. He was the one that took care of me, helping me to pack up their belongings and eventually prepare sell it. I lived with him and his parents for my senior year, his brother already gone for college in California the year before. He pushed me through that year, encouraging me to apply for Ivy League schools for college, always a shoulder to cry on when the pain and stress became too much to stand.

We ended up going to the same college in Seattle, unaware of each other's decision until we had already made the housing payments. I was there purely on a combination of scholarships and my parent's life insurance plans, the only good thing that could have come out of their deaths. At our high school graduation, he told me that I was the best friend one could ever want, and I felt the same.

At college, we met new people, but we continued to spend an inordinate amount of time together, fitting in coffee and parties between classes and work. Alice became one of my best friends, too, the luckiest roommate assignment that I could have ever hoped for. Edward hadn't been so fortunate, the result being that he spent much of his time either in the library or in my dorm room, which was only a few floors below his. Alice always thought that we would get together, despite my insistent claims of only being friends.

However, she was right. Something about being at college together had changed us. We had started to meet other people, going out on dates with people we met in classes and school clubs around campus. For the first time, we were being exposed to a larger group of people than those in our tiny hometown, allowing us to meet more people who shared our interests and desires. We chatted about all of it, all the bad dates and heartbreak and chance meetings.

Eventually, just after our first Thanksgiving after leaving for school, and one of my first without my parents, I found out my boyfriend had been cheating on me. Dejected, I had automatically run to him, feeling so inadequate that I wanted to just disappear. He had told me that if he were my boyfriend, he would never think of betraying me like that because I was the most wonderful, beautiful person he had ever had the privilege of knowing.

That utterance had been enough for me to really consider the possibility of us becoming something more, and it was that night, sitting next to each other on my bed in the empty dorm room, that we kissed since that silly game of spin the bottle.

Our relationship developed quickly, buoyed by our friendship, and it wasn't long before we told his parents, who were thrilled for us. All our friends gushed about how perfect we were for each other, how well suited our personalities were. I felt as if we fit together like to puzzle pieces, like a missing part of myself had been right in front of my this whole time and all I had to do was really look at it in order to understand that it was there.

We moved into an apartment together off campus for our sophomore year, knowing that it was the right decision for us, both personally and financially. He began to intern at the local hospital, on the pre-med track, while I worked in the education department on campus in research. I had changed my major from literature to teaching, hoping to stay an extra year for my master's and then start teaching at the elementary level soon after.

I knew the road ahead of us was not going to be easy – we both struggled with balancing our classes and work with our personal lives, attempting to spend time with both each other and with friends while trying to stay on top of our jobs and studies. Occasionally, we fought, but just like when we were kids, we easily managed to forgive each other and focus on what was most important. When I was with him, I felt like I could touch the heavens, all I had to do was reach out and grasp them in my hands.

The next two years flew by, my twenty-first birthday allowing me to poke fun at him – nearly a full year younger than me and still underage – and we hosted a large party at our apartment in celebration. Then, when our junior year in college was finished, we threw a party for him, finally able to call himself a legal adult as far as the state was concerned, inviting all our friends still in the area.

He had seemed so happy, so content then, but little did I know that in a few short weeks he would forcibly cut his way out of my life, forever separating us from each other.

I felt lost without him, not knowing what to do with myself now that he was gone. He had been the one constant in my life for as long as I could remember, grounding me. Being with him was so easy, as natural as breathing. Life without him was unimaginable.

But now I was forced to face the unimaginable, forced by his hand. How could I have not known that he would kill himself? How did I not recognize the depression that must have gripped him so tightly that he saw no other choice than to end his life? Had I been so happy that I had been blind to his pain? What could have made him commit such a terrible act when it seemed that we had it all?

How could he have sentenced me to a life marked by his absence?

As much as I wanted these answers, I knew that I would never get them. No explanation could suffice, no note could fix what he had done. No note could bring him back to me, no matter how much I wished that it could.

Our empty apartment was a painful reminder of what he had taken with him when he left me behind.


End file.
